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Over the course of his decades-long career, legendary tattoo artist Mark Mahoney, owner of the Shamrock Social Club in Hollywood, has seen his industry transform from underground and illicit profession to heralded pop-culture art form. As proof of just how far the industry has evolved, Mahoney is lending his talents to a label known for its florid prints and sharply tailored suits: Paul Smith. The result is a capsule collection that takes iconography borrowed from the tattoo world’s visual lexicon and applies it to T-shirts, hoodies, and, most impressively, tailored garments like blazers.
“I’ve always thought tattoos were high-fashion and for people on the cutting edge,” said Mahoney, sporting a silvery pompadour and wearing a crimson high-waisted suit. (Paul Smith, natch.) From his chair at Shamrock, Mahoney has pioneered a careful, fine-lined style—the sort of elegant ink you’d expect from a guy in a crimson suit. “Some people, when I meet them, don’t believe I’m a tattoo artist,” he said with a grin that includes a glinting gold tooth. “Indeed, I am and have been for a long time.” He chuckles before adding: “Overdressed and underpaid.”
Mahoney and Sir Paul met at a party a year or so back, and while the designer may not have any ink himself, he expressed a deep appreciation for the craft. “What I’ve loved about them is their artistic quality,” he said, after finishing up a chat with customer and pal Harrison Ford. “Mark’s work is so refined, it’s so gentle, I just thought it could translate really well into embroidery.”
The collection features classic tattoo imagery—the panther, the swallow, hands across the seas—and was conceived, in part, to highlight not their innate badassery but something more unexpected: their underlying sense of hope and optimism. “Hands across the ocean, that’s a lovely message: American forces and English forces,” says Smith. “In this world that we live in that’s, well, such a mess, a lot of these are messages about love, about confidence, about friendship.”
Tattoo-inspired fashion has often tilted into the flamboyant, à la Christian Audigier. Instead, the results are a much more restrained affair—blazers, hooded sweatshirts, T-shirts, scarves, leather Chelsea boots featuring tonal embroideries.
“I wanted to do something that was beautiful and unexpected,” Smith explained. “Tattoo motifs have been used so many times in fashion,” Mahoney added. “So many times it’s gaudy, there are too many colors, it’s too eye-drawing. My tattoos look like they're a part of…like they’re in the skin, not on the skin. And that’s exactly how this collection works: They’re in the leather, they’re in the fabric, not just on it. It’s intrinsic.”
As the fashion industry is increasingly led by large corporations, Sir Smith noted that he’s an independent—the buck stops with him—and that projects like this help him stay creatively nimble. “There’s a lovely, scary sentence I think of often. No one cares how good you used to be.” For that reason, Smith says, he’s dabbled in designing non-fashion objects that include a Leica camera and a bicycle. “You’ve got to do things that scare you.”
It’s that ethos, in part, that has made Smith's Melrose Avenue store, which, with its Pepto Bismol–pink facade, the most Instagrammed building in California. That’s right: Paul Smith, for better or worse, essentially invented the “Instagram wall” before the social-media platform even existed. “That’s the luxury of being the owner, of being independent. You can take risks. I know L.A. is flat and wide, that everyone drives a car, that Melrose is 20 miles long. I knew I needed an Eiffel Tower, something that made everyone stop and notice.”
While Smith works with fabric and Mahoney with ink and needles, both men deal in the fine art of memory making. Smith, after all, dresses men for their weddings (not to mention actors when they’re up for a big award), and Mahoney’s work often commemorates important milestones—the birth of a child, the death of a loved one. It’s work that neither takes lightly. “In this homogenized world, we’re keen on people being able to express themselves,” said Smith. “Their individuality, through tattoos or clothing.”
While the fashion industry has certainly evolved over the years, it’s maybe Mahoney who’s undergone the biggest sea change—from outlaw to icon—all the while watching tattoos move from fringe to mainstream. “They definitely weren’t always socially acceptable,” he said. “It was much more underground, and in some ways I miss that. But in another way, I’m just glad that now everyone can experience a tattoo and how good it makes you feel.”
